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Don't get caught

If you are a big fish, you'll be a good catch, you won' escape nets of all sorts.

The thing is not to be stuck in the absolute, not to be drunk with the relative. This is the meaning of "beyond". "Beyond" does not point at a distant realisation, a shore to reach, "beyond" as here and now free from habits and expectations. Non attachment is another way to look at it. Not dwelling expresses the same truth.

This is also why Dogen's teachings are filled with mists, clouds, rivers, walking mountains, smoke, not just to convey an impression of nature and his love for practice in the deep valleys, but also to point at the real transient body of all things, free from the dual and non dual. Killing the devil and killing Buddha at once is our practice, beyond mundane and sacred.

"I have got it" is as irrelevant as " I have lost it".

This is the groundless ground on which face to face transmission can take place.

Hi Enkyo, Face to face transmission is called denpo or shiho, it is when a priest or a lay person is given the authorisation to teach and transmit the teachings through a very specific ceremony. In a way, this is a form of official recognition to avoid fraud and provide continuity in the way teachings and practice are handed over.

Something that hangs freely in the void of not this and not that ( in the Dogen sense of these words). My intuitive reaction, the ring of the bell to this, is a feeling I have for a while now: Umpf! and Bah! Please, just let me sit and work as often as I can safely in homeplace shikantaza. Chop wood me and fetch water me and see it all as it is. Void me but full me, so what? "This" is not what we think this is, and does not change anything. A bit tiered of straining and reaching ( not meant at your fine words dear Taigu but at word smart "Talking Zen" instead of sitting, silent and stilled Zen)

Rocks rolling uphill from the desert
Clouds trown into the dust
Walking in the illusion
Trying to bring ease where possible
while "I" sits in reality.

Gassho, Shawn Jakudo Hinton
It all begins when we say, “I”. Everything that follows is illusion.
"Even to speak the word Buddha is dragging in the mud soaking wet; Even to say the word Zen is a total embarrassment."
寂道

"Know that the practice of zazen is the complete path of buddha-dharma and nothing can be compared to it....it is not the practice of one or two buddhas but all the buddha ancestors practice this way."
Dogen zenji in Bendowa